“Identity terms” are the words that people use to affiliate themselves and others with particular groups — ethnic, racial, religious, social and so on.

Cynthia Baker, associate professor of religious studies at Bates, recently received $50,400 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support her research into one of history’s most fraught identity terms: “Jew,” a word that can convey praise, pride, prejudice or pure description.

No studies exist that analyze the use and the historical development, from ancient times through the postmodern era, of that term, Baker says. The NEH grant will enable her to research and write a book slated for publication in the “Key Words in Jewish Studies” series published by Rutgers University Press.

The book will map the emergence, evolution and current permutations of the term “Jew.” Baker’s yearlong research will involve experts and archives in the U.S., Europe and Israel, among other resources. She will examine ancient inscriptions and conduct art-historical analyses of images of Jews including those from medieval European churches, manuscripts, modern cartoons, propaganda and current pop art.

“The project is important both in its specificity and as a case study for analyzing the dynamics of identity formation and attribution,” Baker notes in her proposal for the grant. “Who decides the content of identity terms, and how does that content come to be generated over time, within and across societies? How is it that a single identity term — ‘Jew,’ for example — can be made to convey such a broad range of (often diametrically opposed) meanings?”

She notes that worldwide political and social developments make this research more compelling than ever. “In an age of ethnic nationalisms, mass migrations and identity formations across national lines, understanding the dynamics of collective identification becomes an increasingly urgent concern,” Baker says.

Baker will carry out her research in several phases, including the examination of ancient evidence for the origins of the term “Jew,” and the exploration of the term’s many overlapping and competing definitions over time — Christian, anti-Semitic, nationalist, etc.

Baker earned her B.A. at Wesleyan, master’s degree at Harvard, and doctorate at Duke. She has taught at Duke, Cornell, Swarthmore and Santa Clara University. Her research explores ideas about gender, ethnicity and nationalism in the formative periods of Judaism and Christianity and in modern historiography on these periods. Her book Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity was published by Stanford University Press in 2002.

Baker’s NEH grant is called a Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars.

The National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 established the NEH. An independent federal agency of the United States government, it is dedicated to supporting research, preservation, education and public programs in the humanities.

Dr. Khassan Baiev, a Chechen physician, author and human rights activist, will speak at Bates College on International Human Rights Day at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 11, in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall, 44 Campus Ave. The public is invited to attend the talk, titled Chechnya Today: A Doctor’s Perspective, free of charge. For more information, call 207-786-6289.

A surgeon during the first (1994-1996) and second (1999-present) Chechen wars, Baiev operated on both Russians and Chechens, attracting criticism and death threats from both Russian special forces and Chechen extremists. Physicians for Social Responsibility helped Baiev apply for asylum in the United States, where he emigrated in 2000. Today he lives in Massachusetts with his wife and their six children.

Author of a widely acclaimed memoir, The Oath: Surgeon Under Fire (Walker & Company, 2004), Baiev has said: “I wrote The Oath for two reasons. I wanted the world to know that war is a hellish thing, which victimizes the innocent. In war there are no winners. Second, and equally important, I wanted to introduce my readers to the Chechen people.” The Boston Globe describes Baiev’s volume as a “vivid, disturbing account” that “unfolds in the mind’s eye like a movie. His extraordinary empathy for both sides is inspiring.”

During the last three years, Baiev has become an outspoken advocate for human rights, focusing his efforts on the International Committee for the Children of Chechnya. Featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, he has been honored by Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International. His talk at Bates follows his visit to the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College, Room 170, 51 Westminster St., where he will participate in a daylong human rights celebration with a Chechen focus. Read about these USM-LAC activities, or call 207-753-6574.

Baiev’s Bates talk is sponsored by the college’s medical studies program, the biology department, the German and Russian studies department, the humanities division and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Scholars and human-rights advocates will join survivors of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda to discuss its origins and outcomes on Friday and Saturday, March 30 and 31, at Bates College.

Titled Rwanda: From National Disintegration to National Reunification: The Legacy of the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, the conference is open to all free of charge. Sponsors of the event include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, please contact Assistant Professor of French Alexandre Dauge-Roth, the event’s organizer, at 207-786-6281.

This interdisciplinary gathering will gather speakers from Rwanda, Europe and the United States, including members of the Rwandan diaspora living in New England. “Envisioned as a place of encounter and relationship-building, it will allow survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi to share stories, struggles and hopes to promote a better understanding of this traumatic legacy,” says Dauge-Roth.

In a prelude to the conference, students in Dauge-Roth’s seminar “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” will offer posters and performances reflecting their correspondence with genocide survivors at 4:30 p.m. Friday, March 30, in Pettengill Hall. The presentations are part of the Mount David Summit, a celebration of academic achievement at Bates.

The conference itself begins with remarks and a reception at 7:45 p.m. Friday in Chase Hall Lounge. It continues with a day of panel discussions in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52) starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 31, and concludes with a Rwandan dance performance and remarks at 8 p.m. in Chase Hall. (Click the links for a full conference schedule and a list of participants.)

The panel presentations will proceed chronologically from a discussion about the origins of the genocide, to eyewitness accounts of the massacre, to an examination of the country’s efforts to rebuild and to effect national reconciliation.

Speakers include faculty in diverse disciplines from Bates, Bowdoin and Colby colleges and the University of Paris; experts on the genocide including a Human Rights Watch specialist on Rwanda, a Rwandan national prosecutor and the director of the Refugee and Immigration Services at Catholic Charities Maine; and survivors including founding members of an association for the genocide’s widows and children, and two authors who bear witness to the massacres in their works.

The event takes place about a week before the 13th anniversary of a genocide whose scale and ferocity stunned the world. As Dauge-Roth points out, 2007 is midway through the timeline for the Rwanda government’s Vision 2020, a program, devised in the wake of the tragedy, for the impoverished nation’s reconciliation, reconstruction and economic revitalization.

“We are 13 years after the genocide and 13 years before 2020,” Dauge-Roth says. “So it’s also a moment where we can learn, evaluate and reflect on what has been accomplished and consider what the challenges are in the longer term.”

Dauge-Roth, a Swiss native who started at Bates in 2005, organized the conference as an extension of his own research into the Rwandan genocide. He is exploring the personal, literary and film narratives created about Rwanda in the years since Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu.

“I’m examining how these authors use an aesthetic of haunting,” he says. “These testimonies and documentaries find ways to haunt the reader and the viewer, so that we cannot go back to our usual business and forget about it.”

During a 2006 trip to Rwanda, Dauge-Roth established a network of genocide survivors who have corresponded with Bates students in this winter’s “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” seminar. (French is an official language of Rwanda.)

“I hope that students will reflect on what it means to listen to a survivor,” says Dauge-Roth. “There’s a lot to learn from them about the ability to struggle and to live on despite horrific loss.”

Several speakers from the Bates event will also take part in similar panels at Harvard University (5-7 p.m. March 27, Tsai Auditorium, South Building, S010), at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. (4-6 p.m. March 28, Hogan Campus Center, Room 519) and at the University of Colorado at Boulder (April 3).

“My hope is that these conferences will be a key step to building personal relationships with Rwandan community partners for future projects,” Dauge-Roth says.